Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

Okay, I HATE writing to an outline. Just wanted to share that.

But . . .
The mailbox stayed painted and looks great.
The collage is coming together which should make rewriting this mess easier.
I did another 1000 words. Yes, I know I’m behind. I told you I hate this.

Some of us were just not born linear. Which is why we collaborate with people who were.

I swear, it feels as though this story is lurking just out of reach of my frontal lobe. I know it’s out there, I can see it moving around in the darkness, and yet . . .

Oh, well, tomorrow is another day, Scarlett.

The new Terry Pratchett is out. THUD. That’s the name of it. It’s sitting next to my couch right now and I CAN’T READ IT. And it’s a WATCH book, too. The agony. If I read it, I’ll start writing in snarky omniscient and my already tentative grasp on Christmas romance will go all to hell. But it’s a NEW PRATCHETT. I’m suffering here.

But Sept. 30, when this first draft is done, I’m reading it. With a liter of Diet Coke and the junk food of my choice, I am going to have a wonderful time with Vimes. And Sybil. I suppose Susan is too much to hope for, but certainly Carrot and Angua. Oh, just hell. I hate delayed gratification.

In other news I have 647 unanswered e-mails to go before I’m caught up. So I ignored them and spent two hours today painting my mailbox which happens to be on a very busy highway (“Novelist Killed in Tragic Mailbox Incident; Friends Say, “She Always Was A Moron”) only to go back to the house and hear thunder. I’ll have to go and look at it tomorrow to see if any of the paint stayed on during the following deluge. The good part is that it gave me time away from the computer to think, which was good.

Because then I came inside and wrote. I’m at 5, 527 words, and some of them are good. This might be working. I mean, technically, that’s a quarter of the novella. It’s going to turn out a lot longer than that, and then I’ll have to cut it, but I made some progress here. The characters are shaping up. I got me some motifs.

This could work.

So let’s see what we’ve learned:

1. If you give up sugar for three days, the craving does not go away. I just had a sundae and it was delicious.
2. That 2000 word a night thing does not work if the words aren’t in your brain. I reread those 2000+ words from last night. They stink on ice.
3. Some of us aren’t linear thinkers.

But I’m on it. I’ve got the collage started, I’ve got people talking in my head, and I’ve got an outline with beats. What I did get done today: Brainstorming for DLD marketing, beginnings of collage, and internet research. (It’s not like I didn’t work. I swear.) Tomorrow I’m going out for more Diet Coke and pretzels and trying this again.

So I’m behind what now? 4000 words?
Argh.

I did 2358 words. They’re lousy words, but by God I wrote them.

Plus I downloaded four versions of Santa Baby from iTunes to inspire me. I can’t find any of my Christmas music, so that’s something else to do tomorrow because I definitely need Christmas music. I’d do Christmas cookies, too, except for that no refined sugar thing. Maybe drag one of the little Christmas trees out of storage just until the novella is done. It’s hard getting Christmassy in September.

It’s also hard writing because this is season premiere month, so I’m missing a lot of new shows. Thank God for Tivo, although the hard drive is filling up fast. I cheated and watched Miami Ink tonight because I’m hooked on it, and NCIS because I’m hooked on Mark Harmon and Pauley Perrette, but everything else on there is untouched and calling to me. I love TV. All those people who say, “I wouldn’t have a TV in my home,” I just feel sad for them. No Buffy. No House. No Bobby Goren. No Lorelei and Luke, no Muldaur and Scully, no Rush and Valens, no Charlie and Don. No Jon Stewart, for heaven’s sake. What are they thinking? They can’t tell Galactica from Serenity or Spike from Angel. It’s just so sad.

But enough about them. I wrote 2358 words. Two scenes that are not well-developed and are going to need major work, but hey, they’re on the page.

This is when I always have grave doubts about the whole writing thing, especially my writing. Seriously, this is lousy, lousy prose, but it’s always lousy in the beginning until I find the rhythm and the characters, until the words start to bounce. So tomorrow I’ll do better.

The important thing is I got 2358 tonight.

So I’ve been refined sugar-free for two days now. I think. I’ve been eating Smucker’s Simply Fruit jam and it occurred to me that manufacturers sometimes lie, so I checked the ingredients and there’s something called “fruit syrup” in there. “Syrup” usually means “sugar,” but then again, fruit has natural sugar in it, so . . . I googled. And some woman is suing Smuckers because the jam is not “Simply Fruit” but is also fruit juices and fruit syrups and fruit pectin. For once, I’m on the side of Big Business: It didn’t say Simply Strawberries, lady, it said Simply FRUIT. And now I’m thinking there’s no refined sugar in fruit syrups, so I really have been sugar free. And it’s been pretty painless, too. Somebody said if you go without sugar for three days, you’ve kicked it. That seemed too easy, so I googled again.

There are a lot of people out there who seem to think that white sugar is The Devil. They want me to give up canned corn for fresh corn on the cob, but honey, I live in Ohio and fresh corn on the cob is only available for a brief time. The stuff in the wrapped packages in the produce section is not fresh. Fresh is when you pick it and bring it into the kitchen immediately and cook it with some of the silk still on it or bake it in the husks. Everything else is Old Corn. That guy wanted me to keep a journal of what I eat, too. I understand that many people find this helpful, but I’m a writer, for heaven’s sake. I can’t waste my writing on a food journal, I have to make a living. Plus he said to write everything down, like five M&Ms. Who the hell ever ate five M&Ms? And you know I’d get distracted and start writing riffs on zen of five M&Ms or something. This guy is just not in touch with my reality. Further proof: He said that if you usually eat ice cream before bed, you should substitute a potato. No, I am not making this up. I can hear Gaffney on this now. She has strong feelings about ice cream.

Then there was the site that said if I don’t kick sugar, I’ll be an alcoholic. Since Maui, I have not had any alcohol because of the distressing lack of little umbrellas in Ohio, but according to this site, “As bodies lose their ability to rapidly metabolize simple sugars cravings begin for ever increasing concentrated sugars, finally ending with alcoholism.” Then I look down and the guy’s selling the cure for sugar metabolism disruption. Always read to the bottom of the page. Then there was the site that said I had to take supplements to balance the nutrients I was losing in giving up sugar; guess where I could get the supplements. Or the smug sugar-free guy who talked about stopping along the Appalachian trail to pick the chocolate pieces out of his trail mix. That has to be one of the top ten signs of incipient serial killer-ism.

None of them said it would only take three days. Damn.

But all that googling put me behind, she said, whining. And I was gone all afternoon doing that maintenance stuff that soaks up so much time, like buying paper towels and picking up prescriptions and waiting in doctor’s offices. And then . . .

You’re not buying this, are you?

Okay, I didn’t write anything today, but I did expand that basic outline so that I have all the scene beats in there. And now I’m going to go through and see what I’ve got there and what I’ve missed. It’s actually the most complete outline I’ve ever done. Well, it’s the only outline I’ve ever done, but it’s really complete. I’m wondering if by the time I get the outline done, I won’t need to write the book. And I know I’ll never be able to do this for 100,000 words. It’s just not happening. But it’s looking pretty good for 20,000.

Or it would be if it hadn’t been for the Smuckers debacle and those anti-sugar freaks on the net.

It wasn’t my fault. Google made me do it.